The Tribune from Scranton, Pennsylvania • 17

Rare exhibit Dangerous fakes Con men claim to be utility workers, rapists masquerade as FBI agents and robbers impersonate police in attempts to enter homes. Page C-2 An exhibit touring the United States is made up of objects assembled from Soviet and American museums for a rare public display. Page C-6 If today's your birthday, Jeane Dixon says be loving and forgiving If you want to renew a relationship. Page C-2 SECTION iLJlvS 11 lllLJllKSS The Morning Times, Monday, February 12, 1990 Helen Reddy, Torme ready for Kirby Center concert ft f4 1.JK!?,,H'-T1t!? On tour for the first time in about six years, she will join the man she describes as "one of my idols," Mel Torme, for a Valentine's Day concert at the Kirby Center, Wilkes-Barre, on Wednesday at 8 p.m. "This concert is a little different for both of us," Ms.

Reddy said during a telephone interview from her hotel in Worcester, Mass. "We're playing to audiences that By Jane Julius Honchell LIFETIMES WRITER ELEN REDDY, whose feminist anthem, "I Am Woman," brought her acclaim not only as a performer, but also as a crusader for women's rights, is back in the spotlight but with a softer edge. may not be our usual listeners, so I've added a number of standards to my repertoire for the concert," she added, noting that she and her co-star have planned "a little surprise" for the audience at the show's conclusion. Although she's been keeping a somewhat lower profile for the last few years, performing mainly for private audiences at conventions and corporate functions, Ms. Reddy 1 tJ0 a A "I' said she couldn't resist taking her show on the road again.

"The chance to work with Mel (Torme) is really a musical thrill for me, and although my corporate performances are very lucrative for me, they are not open to the general public. I've missed" being-out there," she said. Performing has been in this Australian native's blood almost since birth. Three of her grandparents, both parents and a sister have all been on the stage, and a nephew, who has a promising acting career, makes the fourth generation of Reddys to seek the spotlight. Ms.

Reddy, who considers herself "very thoroughly Americanized" after almost 24 years in the United States, arrived here in 1966 after winning a contest that promised her a trip to New York and an audition with an American recording company. She got her trip, all right, but the record company had expected a male singing group and just wasn't interested in the throaty singer from Down Under. Although she was an "instant" success from the time she cut her first record, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," for Capitol Records, Ms. Reddy laughs at the concept of "instant. "My daughter and I lived in New York, where I played in small clubs, just trying to make ends meet, for five years before I finally signed with Capitol Records," she recalled.

Ms. Reddy said she wrote "I Am song that became her first No. 1 hit and earned her a Grammy Award, "because of my involvement in the woman's movement," an involvement that continues today. She recently marched in the Pro-Choice Rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and often lectures on women's issues. MEL TORME P.

-sf HELEN REDDY Despite the fact that she has been a career woman from the word go, Ms. Reddy said her two children always took priority in her life. "I tailored my work schedule around their lives, but now that my daughter is married and my son is going off to college, I'm freer to take on new ventures," she said. These new ventures have included stints in summer stock, where she has played Reno Sweeny in Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," Sally Adams in "Call Me Madam," and the title role in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." "I'd love to do a Broadway show now," she admitted, explaining that although she has been mainly a solo act, she enjoys being part of an ensemble. "I love the camara-See Helen, Page C-5 "I've seen some visible changes in the way women are perceived, but we've still got a long way to go," she mused.

"Fifteen years ago, there were no women reading the news on television, and few women assigned to cover hard news for newspapers. That's changed, but we're still struggling in other areas," Ms. Reddy said. She complained that she does not see much turn-around in film or other performing arts areas, and is particularly distressed about the dearth of rape crisis centers and shelters for abused women and children. "I think it's appalling that we have more shelters for animals than we do for women and children in America," she said.

'Stanley and Iris' an uncommon love story "I don't usually lake the bus," says Stanley with nutty cheerfulness. "My bike was stolen." In this way Stanley (Robert De Niro) and Ins (Jane Fonda) meet, beginning an uncommon love story about a pair of keenly observed, seemingly commonplace people. Stanley and Iris inhabit a world so seldom acknowledged by movie makers that in Martin Ritt's "Stanley and Iris," it seems as arcane as fin de siecle Paris. In fact, it's end-of-the-20th-eentury New England factory town. The movie is going to be a hardsell for most of today's audiences.

That will be too bad, though proba-blv understandable. There's no easy way to describe "Stanley and Ins" without making it sound too noble and worthy to be much fun. Here is a "good work" in which two of our most high-powered film stars more or less pare down their public personalities to fit into a world that most Americans never see, even those who live out their lives in it. Yet "Stanley and Ins" does not condescend It as honest and direct and entertaining as the cu.isiderable talents of everyone involved can make it. Not the least of these talents are Harriet Frank Jr.

and Irving Rav-etch. the writers whose eight collaborations with Ritt began with "The Long. Hot Summer' and include "Hud" and "Norma Rae." Like "Norma Rae," as well as By Vincent Canby N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE Stanley and Iris are not the sort of characters one often meets in movies these days. They're not exactly high-profile types.

There are no extraterrestrials in their lives, no vice cops and not much of anything that could pass for comedy of the thigh-slapping kind. They may go to movies, but not with any regularity. If they have the time, they probably prefer watching TV. Neither one yet owns a VCR. Stanley and Iris are both over 40.

They are members of the working class in a society in which many blue-collar workers, though not Stanley and Iris, earn as much as if not more than people who call themselves middle class. Stanley is a cook in the canteen of the Nevins Davis Bakery, where Iris is a cake icer on the assembly line He's a loner who lives with his old father and putters around inventing things. Ins, a recent widow with two children, shares her already cluttered house with her sister and unemployed brother-in-law. Her money is hard earned, which is why he is so outraged when her purse is etched oo the bus as she's riding l'me from work. Stanley comes to the rescue, but too late.

The thief makes off with her paycheck. When Iris calms dmn. jhe thanks Stanley. "Lucky hj were on the bus." limiting his contacts with the world, living in self-imposed isolation. "You ask yourself," he says at one point, I have a name if I can't write He has developed the wiliness of a thief in his stratagems to avoid exposure.

Not until the practical, tough-skinned, frankly sexual Iris comes along does he find the nerve to face the facts. "Stanley and Iris" demands a certain effort to suspend disbelief. One might have thought that he could have learned how to sign a reasonable facsimile of his name in all these years. Yet Iris's education of Stanley Cox is both moving and funny. As long as the film sticks to this affirmative action (in which, of course, the teacher is also taught by her pupil), the movie works beautifully.

The members of the supporting cast are equally good, including Swoosie Kurtz, as Ins's sister, Martha Plimpton and Harley Cross, as her children, and, in particular, Feo-dor Chaliapm, as Stanley's father, a very old man, who. while awaiting death with impassive dignity, allows son to cut his hair. Warning: The movie ends badly with sequence that is to false Uiat it almost gives the lie to all that has preceded it. It's not unlike a facelift that leaves the patient weanng a permanently unconvincing grin. t'Stmtev and Ins," heh tas bren rated PG-13, is playing at lV Enc-Seranton Scranton-Carbon-date Highwav.

I "The Moiiy Maguires" and "The Front," also directed by Ritt, "Stanley and Iris" represents a kind of committed film making that has been generally out of favor for some years. At least in part, this has been because the commitment is so often a substitute for content as well as style. Now, in this era of music-video movie making, Ritt stands almost alone as an unembarrassed social realist and a movie maker of conscience. "Stanley and Iris" is not as shapely and smoothly turned as the Oscar-winning "Norma Rae," which managed to celebrate unionism at a time when union busting was becoming as fashionable as conspicuous consumption. The focus of "Stanley and Iris" is much shorter and its concerns, to most movie audiences, even more esoteric.

Stanley, played by De Niro with great good humor and damaged feeling, is illiterate. He has somehow been able to get through life, so far without learning how to read and wnte. When be was growing up. he traveled around the country with his salesman father, never quite settling in one place long enough to receive a basic education. When, finally, they did settle.

Stanley felt he was too old to go through the humiliation of first grade L'nUl he meets Ins. Stanley has accommodated his disadvantage by Th film "Stanley Iris" stars Robert DeNiro end Jre Fonda, two of our most hfgrt-powere-d film stars who more or less pare down their public personalities to Into a world that most Americans neer see..